Since 2016, Scottish public opinion on the matter of Europe has continued to diverge from the rest of the UK.
Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Robert Holmes is one of the few on Bridge of Weir’s high street to offer an unqualified welcome to Theresa May, who was continuing her Brexit publicity blitz in Scotland on Wednesday afternoon.

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“She’s a hardy woman, dealing with all those clowns around her. She’s between a rock and a hard place, but she’s doing her best and if we don’t have a deal we’ll be in a right pickle.”

Holmes, a butcher by trade, was one of the 38% of Scots who voted to leave the European Union in 2016. “I know a lot of people round here who voted out because of EU farming and fishing policies,” he says, “but nobody is that fussed about it now. People coming into the shop still don’t know much about the EU, even after the campaign.”

He has no sympathy for the 71.5% of Scots who, according to recent polling, aspire to a second vote on the final Brexit deal. “They’re calling it ‘the people’s vote’ now, not a referendum, but what about the 17 million people who voted out? It’s supposed to be democratic, but all these clever politicians want to stay in.”

Neil Conroy (left) and Robert Holmes (blue apron) at Holmes the Butchers on Bridge of Weir Main Street. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

Other locals in the rural Renfrewshire town express a mixture of boredom, bafflement and frustration at the latest iteration of the ongoing Brexit saga.

“I’m heartily sick of it,” said Catherine Feechan, a solicitor, who is likewise concerned about the consequences of crashing out of the EU with no deal at all. “I don’t love [what Theresa May has negotiated] but whatever deal she came back with people were not going to be happy. It’s better than the alternative of leaving with no deal, which would be awful.”

“Personally I’d rather we were remaining, but people who think we can go back to the EU and get a better deal are living in fairy land.”

Darren Bolton, sales manager for a renewables company, accepts May’s insistence that Scottish businesses want certainty – “People in my industry are apprehensive about spending money right now” – but is less convinced by her ability to deliver it with the deal she is putting to parliament.

“To be honest I don’t think they’ve got a clue. They’ll need to have another vote, because there are all these big issues that still need clarification and so much has changed.”

Since 2016, Scottish public opinion on the matter of Europe has continued to diverge from the rest of the UK: analysis released by the pro-EU campaign Best for Britain and Hope not Hate on Tuesday found that nearly 70% of people across Scotland would now vote to retain EU membership, compared with 56% across Great Britain as a whole.

Kevin Pringle, former director of communications for the Scottish National party, who now works on behalf of the Scotland for a People’s Vote campaign, argues: “What’s interesting is that opinion south of the border has moved closer to opinion in Scotland. Yes there’s a fatigue about Brexit but the result is the exact opposite to the conclusion that the prime minster has drawn - what people want is not to get on and deliver it but to stop it.”

Over the past week, the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the common fisheries policy – especially loathed by Scotland’s North Sea fleets – has become a flashpoint, with first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, accusing Theresa May of “yet another Tory sellout”. The UK government has insisted that access to fishing will not be linked with final trade terms, but statements from EU leaders over the weekend suggest that access for their fishermen to UK waters will remain key to negotiations after March 2019.

“The treatment of the fishing industry over the years has a totemic status in Scottish politics that it doesn’t have elsewhere,” Pringle explains. “But now it’s connected to the disillusionment that people have felt with the deal, because if there was one issue where the leave campaign had traction in Scotland it was fishing. In the rest of the UK a number of different arguments – immigration, health service funding - had force too, but in Scotland there was only one. If the deal is not seen to be delivering for the fishing industry then it invalidates the whole thing from a Scottish leave perspective.”

When Sturgeon announced that SNP MPs would back a second EU referendum at her party’s conference in October – having previously declined to support the option – some activists raised concerns that this could create a damaging precedent for another independence vote. While others accept that the political conditions are not right for another campaign to leave the UK amid so much unfolding uncertainty, those concerns continue, especially after Sturgeon yesterday appeared to push back any announcement of plans for a second referendum until the new year.

Prof John Curtice: Brexit ‘has divided support for the nationalists in a way that it did not four years ago’. Photograph: Martin Hunter for the Guardian

Her hesitancy is understandable, according to Strathclyde University polling expert Prof John Curtice. “The problem for Nicola Sturgeon about Brexit is that it hasn’t changed the total numbers [in favour of independence] but it has created an issue that has divided support for the nationalists in a way that it did not four years ago,” he says, noting “the substantial underbelly of yes support that voted leave”.

Despite growing support for the EU and a “people’s vote”, it’s possible to exaggerate the significance of Europe to Scottish voters, he says. “Although what happened in 2016 is the best example you can possibly think of to support your argument that Scotland remaining part of the UK is always at risk of having its wishes overturned by England, don’t exaggerate the significance of the EU,” he says. “That’s why when people who voted no [to independence] and remain were asked which matters to you more they said: the union four to one.”

Despite claims from senior Tory Brexiters that Theresa May’s deal, in particular the Northern Ireland backstop, represents a threat to union, Curtice is sceptical. “The idea that Scotland is going to vote for independence because Northern Ireland might have a slightly different relationship with the EU, I’d be very surprised if it were to fly. And the difficulty for the SNP over fishing is that every time they raise it the answer is: ‘You guys want to stay in the EU’, end of story.”

“The crucial thing for the SNP is whether Brexit goes pear-shaped economically and this changes the calculus for voters so far as the perceived economic consequences of independence are concerned. But, ironically, nobody is doing more at the moment to try and stop Brexit than Nicola Sturgeon. She’s trying to stop the one thing that actually might be to her advantage.”